Talk:List of national capitals by population

Largest city

Should we bold every capital that's the largest city as well? Malcolmmwa (talk) 21:32, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

UK constituents

Hi, I removed the capitals of Wales, Scotland and N.I. to make this list more consistent with others in the same series, i.e. it should reflect the capitals of sovereign states and their dependencies only, otherwise the rank's kind of meaningless. Thanks for your feedback, ҉ Randwicked ҉ 04:54, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. Apples&Manzanas (talk) 06:13, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

population figure for Kingston, Norfolk Island

It seems unlikely Kingston's home to half the population of the island. It's a very small locality. And anyhow, the ABS doesn't publish separate population statistics for NI communities, and the provided reference is both apparently broken and marked as unreliable source. I'd remove it, but then what figure to put there? Maybe an n/a? - ҉ Randwicked ҉ 10:23, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

I've done this. Kingston might actually be notable as the only capital in the world with a zero population, if there were a reliable reference for this. But then, I'm dubious it can really be called a 'capital' at all. - ҉ Randwicked ҉ 10:39, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Automatic import from Wikidata ok?

I have developed template:Population WD that retrieves the latest population number for any city or country from Wikidata. As an experiment, I used it in this version of this article. Does it look okay? Still it does not fetch citations from Wikidata, but you can find the citations by clicking on the pen next to the value. There you can also add newer values and sources. I have made the pen visible only to logged-in auto-verified users, to reduce the risk of vandalism and out of aesthetical reasons. Also, there are some other technical issues that need to be fixed in the template, causing the error message "The time allocated for running scripts has expired". So I reverted it. But once that is solved, would it be okay to use it in this article?Tomastvivlaren (talk) 15:29, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

In my opinion, it is better not to change it. The data that emerged from the wikidata were, in the vast majority of cases, more outdated and less quoted than the current ones. Moving to wikidata would reduce the motivation to update the data (otherwise it would have been updated and cited there long ago). FromCzech (talk) 06:30, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

You are pinpointing the key question. Has any of you guys tried to click on the pens in 'this version and entered newer values? Sometimes Wikidata has newer values and sources, but often of the same age.

Another question: If I include this kind of Wikidata template on other pages with old data or less sourced data, should I show the clickable pens to all users - thus encouraging everyone to edit Wikidata? Or should I only show them to logged-in users to reduce the risk of vandalism? I intend to hide the pens in printouts anyway. Tomastvivlaren (talk) 10:15, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Accurate Updates Rejected?

I had updated the number of Dhaka and Dodoma to reflect 2022 census data using the references from these cities Wikipedia articles and the edits were reverted. Are these Wikipedia articles wrong, or does someone not want the page updated? Ntfriedrich (talk) 18:40, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Dodoma is using a 2014 reference, so it's obvious that it doesn't include the 2022 figure. Same Dhaka. Look inside the references you used and don't copy them blindly. FromCzech (talk) 18:43, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Then someone needs to update those articles, because they falsely claim that the population is accurate as of 2022. Ntfriedrich (talk) 01:50, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

British Indian Ocean Territory

Should Diego Garcia, the "capital" of the British Indian Ocean Territory be included in this list? DSOFOreverTYU ~ talk ~ Eurovision 13:29, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Bizarre Statistics

Just a casual viewer of the page genuinely asking, how is the population of Gibraltar's capital 104.1% of its total population? It looks like Monaco has a similar statistic. Am I missing something really obvious, or is this an error? Mistskews1 (talk) 22:06, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

It's because of the % of country was computed as a percentage of the data from Template:UN population, which deviated from the data on this article. Presumably, the newer data from the UN population template decreased as compared to the older data on this page, which is how you got values above 100%.

I've fixed the % of country column for Gibraltar and Monaco to be always 100% since they are by definition a city-state or a city in itself (in the case of Gibraltar). I also fixed this for Singapore, which was showing 99.7% even though it's also a city-state. Chee Cheong Fun (talk) 21:44, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Population of Palau

Probably not zero. It's estimated on the Palau page as 18,024 as at 2021. Brettreasure (talk) 13:29, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Which city to include for Belgium?

In this table, the population of Brussels is taken from City of Brussels (188,737). I think it is more fair to take the population from Brussels (1,235,192). Otherwise, there are actually larger cities in Belgium if you look at List of cities in Belgium. Erwin (talk) 10:43, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

New Delhi?

How is New Delhi — one of the most populated cities in the world — not on this list? 73.213.120.14 (talk) 23:12, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

It is on this list, the list covers all national capitals. CMD (talk) 00:53, 8 August 2024 (UTC)

"Capitals of dependent territories and disputed territories are marked in italics"

Ummmm... no they're not.

This claim has been in the article since its very inception, fifteen years ago. Well, a slight variant of it, actually - "Dependencies and disputed territories are marked in italic". But at least currently, none are.

It's not clear to me how this should be resolved, so I'm opening this section in the talk page. The obvious first step is to simply remove the claim, as it is false. I intend to do that immediately after posting this talk page section. However, how should we proceed after that? I see various options:

1. Don't do anything further than just stripping the claim.
2. Get rid of non-sovereign entities entirely.
3. Move non-sovereign entities to a separate table, lower in the article.
4. Move non-sovereign entities to a separate article.
5. Restore the claim, and make it true, by putting such capitals in italics.
6. Restore the original version of the claim, and make it true, by putting such territories in italics.
7. Restore something like both versions of the claim, and make it true, by putting such capitals and territories in italics.
8. Indicate this information in some entirely different way, such as by the addition of a new "Dependency of" column (blank for sovereign states).

I personally lean towards "Indicate this information in some entirely different way".

In any case where non-sovereign entities are kept in this article and in a table that also includes sovereign entities, I suggest putting the explanation of the notation near the table itself (as the explanation about the meaning of an asterisk currently is), instead of (or at least in addition to) at the very top of the article (as it currently is). -Rwv37 (talk) 21:08, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

"Restore the original version of the claim, and make it true, by putting such territories in italics" sounds like the best option to me. Visual differentiation is welcomed. Keeping them in one table allows comparison with others, and there are not so many of them to be distracting (most of them are placed at the end anyway). I also don't like expanding the table by another column, the current state of dependencies is satisfactory. An alternative option to italics is to colour the line, which would also allow the differentiation of dependencies from disputed territories. FromCzech (talk) 05:33, 30 September 2024 (UTC)